Free A Brilliant Novel in the Works by Yuvi Zalkow Page A

that’s when it hits me. Shmen and his obsession with
obscure band names. He can spend hours Googling for band
names—that’s how he got fired from his last job. My wife is
looking at me. I know she’s wondering how it’s possible an
idiot like me could’ve scored a 1390 on the GRE. And so I try
to think of something to say. I try to come up with some way
to explain why I’ve been brooding for months about money
and napkin dilemmas that don’t even exist. I need to give my
wife an eloquent explanation for my madness.
    And so I say, “Oh.”
    “Jesus, Yuvi!” she says. She gets up fast. “This is how you
live your life?” Julia grabs my pants and pulls them down
enough to see the cuts on my ass. Then she lifts them back up.
“No wonder you have no plot in your novel! You get fixated on
the smallest things and can’t move forward.”
    I know I deserve this, and so I sit down on the bed and
take it. Julia is pacing the bedroom. I’m expecting a big, long
speech and I’m preparing to apologize. But instead of it going
the way I expect and prepare for, she suddenly slows down. She
walks up to me. My body tightens up and I squint, preparing
for the explosion, hoping that if I wish hard enough, I might
disappear. I’d even be willing to pray for it to work out.
    And then Julia leans over me and she kisses me on the top
of my head. “I sure do love you,” she says to me.
    And that’s when I know that things are far worse than I
ever suspected.
    THE SMALLEST THINGS
    The age: eight years old. For both Ezra and me. And for
    Adam Silver, whose birthday party it was. The setting: Adam Silver’s house.
    Adam’s father, dressed as a bad clown (with a sweet smell coming off his skin
    that I’d later connect to alcoholics), had just finished his performance and
    we were all sitting on the living room floor playing with the twisted balloon
    objects he had given us. He claimed that they were elephants and giraffes
    and houses but they were just tangled messes. Even so, his excitement while
    naming these tangled creatures gave us the authority to twist them up further
    and call them whatever we wanted: a racing car, a naked girl hanging from
    the jungle gym, Tyrannosaurus rex. We were loving it.
    By we, I mean all the kids but one. The one not playing was Ezra, who
    had recently crawled over to the corner of the room and sat there quietly,
    hoping to disappear. Ezra had pissed in his pants so badly that his jeans
    were wet down to his knees.
    But I didn’t see him in the corner. I was too wrapped up in the sound
    of twisting the narrow balloons around each other, and how amazing it was
    that they seemed unpoppable. There were boys at the party, there were girls
    at the party, but I actually don’t remember a single face or name. All I remember
    is Ezra Roth in the corner, whom I wasn’t even watching at the time.
    Until I heard Adam Silver yell, “Hey! Look! Ezra peed in his pants!”
    Adam yelled this out even though he knew that Ezra had gotten him Mousetrap
    for his birthday, as he’d asked. And just like that, all ten of us jumped
    Ezra Roth.
    Imagine this: (1) My best friend red-faced and ashamed, completely silent,
    sitting in the corner with his knees in the air higher than his slouchy body.
    (2) Nine children trying to spread Ezra’s legs, boys and girls laughing and
    making fun of how wet he was. “What a baby!” they yelled. (3) And then me,
    one little boy, crying and trying to squeeze Ezra’s legs together, whining,
    “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” like the act of closing his legs could make this
    whole unpleasant scene disappear.
    Throughout all this craziness, Ezra didn’t say a word; he just let his
    legs open and close like they weren’t part of his body. Eventually, Adam’s
    mother ran into the room and broke up the party. She took Ezra with her while
    Adam’s dad tried to distract us—he did an impeccable imitation of John Belushi
    as a king bee from Saturday